Localizing EmpowerID

Owned by Kim Landis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 26, 2018
2 min read

Localization is the process of customizing the strings used in EmpowerID applications and interfaces. As the word "localizing" suggests, you can set up different language locales, but you can also set up different locales for different tenants. Any visible text, from labels to email notifications, has properties and objects associated with it that you can bind to a localized string of text. Each EmpowerID Person has a property that determines which localized version they see in EmpowerID applications, pages, and email notifications. This allows users with different language preferences to see EmpowerID applications and interfaces in their preferred language at run time.

EmpowerID uses several criteria to determine what language to apply to the pages of the EmpowerID web application. 

Language Query String Parameter 

You can append a language query string parameter to the base URL for any page in the web application to force it to display that page in that language. 

To display all pages of the Web application in a specific language, append the following to the Home page URL:

lang=<ISO 639 culture code>-<ISO 3166 subculture code>

For example: https://sso.empowerid.com/UI/?lang=fr-fr where sso.empowerid.com is the FQDN of the EmpowerID Web server in your environment, and fr-fr represents the ISO settings for the locale.

EmpowerID then appends that parameter to each page of the Web application until it is removed from the URL or the user session ends. Thus, searches for people as well as any pages opened by clicking on an action link are displayed in the language associated with the language query string parameter.

Person's Preferred Language 

If a language query string parameter is not used, EmpowerID displays all localized entries in the Preferred Language chosen by the logged-in Person.

Browser Language Settings 

Finally, if no language query string parameter is used and the Person is not logged in, EmpowerID displays the text of the page to the user in accordance with the language settings applied to their browser.